Dear Someone: Don’t mistake sacrifice for love

Read this if you’ve given so much to someone else that you’ve forgotten how to give to yourself.

Dear, Dear Someone, _

There was a man I once knew who believed that love meant giving everything he had. He thought love was about sacrifice—about pouring himself out until there was nothing left, about enduring because the depth of his pain somehow proved the depth of his devotion. And so he gave. He gave his time, his energy, his dreams, his voice. He gave until the lines between love and loss, between commitment and captivity, blurred beyond recognition.

It started innocently enough. She was charming, magnetic, the kind of person who could light up a room with her presence. She made him feel seen, important, even special. He thought she loved him for who he was, but looking back, it became clear she loved him for what he could do for her. At first, it was small things—a favor here, a compromise there. But over time, her expectations grew, and his boundaries shrank.

She would ask, and he would give. She would take, and he would stay.

He told himself it was love. That it was his job to keep her happy, to meet her needs, to make her life easier—even if it came at the expense of his own. He ignored the growing weight of resentment in his chest, the slow erosion of his sense of self. He told himself that if he could just give a little more, sacrifice a little more, she would finally see how much he loved her.

But the truth is, she didn’t need to see his love. She needed to control it. And he let her.

No one ever tells you how easily love can become a prison when you stop protecting yourself. How quickly your desire to give can turn into a pattern of being used. How the person you love can become the person who uses that love against you.

He thought staying silent was kindness. He thought giving was strength. He thought enduring was proof of his love. But what he didn’t understand—what he couldn’t see—was that love without boundaries isn’t love.

It’s self-destruction.

He stayed in that relationship far longer than he should have. Not because he didn’t see the red flags, but because he thought leaving would make him a failure. He told himself that love was about patience, about forgiveness, about sacrifice. And it is. But it’s also about mutual respect, about care, about kindness that goes both ways.

It wasn’t until he was standing in front of the mirror one morning, looking at someone he barely recognized, that he realized the truth: Love isn’t supposed to cost you everything.

He had given so much of himself away that there was nothing left for him.

And that man—the one who thought his worth was measured by how much he could endure, who gave until he lost his sense of self—that man was me.

Now, years later, with a heart that has both healed and grown, I want to share the lessons I learned the hard way. Not to shame myself for what I didn’t know, but to help you avoid the mistakes I made. So if you’re reading this, and you feel like you’re losing yourself in the name of love, let me tell you what I wish someone had told me: